Digital disruption

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE WEB

I wrote this paper based on a “reflect and report” role at Brave Conversations, a 2-day Web Science 2017 conference held in Canberra, Australia.

The conference, convened by Intersticia and the Intersticia Foundation, was supported by the Web Science Trust, the Ethics Centre and the Australian Information Industry Association.

The paper is not an official conference summary or report.

Although it integrates the insights and ideas that emerged over the two days, it does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of any of the participants.

Its purpose is to provide a sense of what was discussed and to provide a starting point for further discussion of these ideas in subsequent and continuing “brave conversations” both in Australia and around the world.

REFLECTIONS ON DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

I gave an interview to Intermedium as part of a series of conferences they ran late last year to explore the next phase of digital transformation in government.

Themes were around mutual respect, humility and the need for digital innovators to understand deeply the contours and constraints of the world they seek to unsettle.

It’s a paradox, I guess, that innovators have to invest heavily in getting under the skin, and showing real respect for intrinsic complexity and contention, of the cultures they then seek to change, often dramatically.

I also explored a couple of other ideas, one of which is captured by the challenge for government more and more to “be digital” as opposed to “do digital”, however well. And the other reflects a view that, in the end, the future of government is government (as opposed to the notion that “the future of government is digital”).

The interview is in two parts and there is a short preview video as well (all available at this link)

ALL ABOUT DISRUPTION (WITHOUT MENTIONING UBER AND AIRBNB)

These are the slides I used to contribute a session on disruption as part of a recent senior management conference with Vice Chancellor Barney Glover and members of the senior management conference at Western Sydney University.

The backdrop took four big themes as the frame – the age of distrust, the end of power, the transition from scaleable efficiency to scaleable learning in the face of the “big shift”, and the inescapable conclusion that, in a world grown too big to know, “the smartest person in the room is the room.”

The slides will give you a sense of the other places I went to prompt a discussion about what, in the face of these trends and forces for change, universities should be doing and what they should become.

The Ledger – a thought experiment from the Institute for the Future about what might happen when education meets blockchain

Theory of the Business – Peter Drucker’s 1994 HBR article which is still one of the best expositions I’ve read about the fundamental task of any organisation or institution – to match its capabilities to its mission to its environment.